05/16/2025
Research Article
Biofilms are bacterial communities that live attached to surfaces and are important for disease development. Grace Johnson, Bonnie Bassler and co-workers develop imaging technology to probe spatiotemporal patterns of Vibrio cholerae biofilm gene expression, showing that temporal and spatial patterns are established by quorum sensing and cyclic-di-GMP signaling, respectively.
Image credit: pbio.3003187
Current Issue April 2025
05/16/2025
Research Article
ATP-dependent phosphofructokinase (PFK) is considered an irreversible glycolytic enzyme. Nicolas Plazolles, Frédéric Bringaud and co-authors show that Trypanosoma brucei is the only known organism that uses PFK in the gluconeogenic direction under physiological conditions, likely due to its compartmentalization within glycosomes.
Image credit: pbio.3002938
05/14/2025
Research Article
Salwan Butrus, Hannah R. Monday, Christopher Yoo, Daniel Feldman and Karthik Shekhar provide a transcriptomic atlas of the developing mouse barrel cortex, identifying temporal gene expression changes during postnatal maturation. Sensory experience minimally affects neuronal cell type maturation and conserved molecular mechanisms underlie cortical development and plasticity.
Image credit: pbio.3003176
05/14/2025
Research Article
Calcineurin is a phosphatase that has been implicated in hypertension and angiotensin-II-induced abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA). Paula Sofía Yunes-Leites, Yilin Sun, Juan Miguel Redondo, Miguel Campanero and colleagues reveal a novel, phosphatase-independent mechanism by which calcineurin contributes to AAA, dependent on its transcriptional reprogramming of smooth muscle cells.
Image credit: pbio.3003163
05/12/2025
Research Article
Oscillations of core clock genes, including Clock (Clk), are essential for the generation of circadian rhythms. Yuanqiang Sun, Ke Shui, Jian Lu, Luoying Zhang and co-workers reveal that upstream open reading frames are enriched in Drosophila circadian genes, and that they repress Clk protein translation and thereby influence circadian gene expression and behavior.
Image credit: pbio.3003173
05/12/2025
Research Article
How is the H2A.Z histone variant targeted to specific sites in the genome by the SWR chromatin remodeler? Cynthia Converso, Leonidas Pierrakeas, Ed Luk and co-authors show that DNA sequences contribute to the substrate specificity of SWR across the yeast genome and that its H2A.Z insertion activity is stimulated by polyadenine tracks in nucleosomes. Don't miss the related Primer by Blaine Bartholomew.
Image credit: pbio.3003059
05/15/2025
Perspective
To what extent can we predict future pathogenic microbes? Arturo Casadevall discusses why complex requirements for virulence and dynamic host-microbe interactions make probabilistic predictions difficult, but not impossible.
Image credit: pbio.3003162
05/07/2025
Consensus View
Vertebrate photoreceptors have been studied for well over a century, but a fixed nomenclature across species has been lacking. This Consensus View proposes a new consolidated and pan-vertebrate naming system for the rod and cone photoreceptors of the eye.
Image credit: pbio.3003157
05/07/2025
Perspective
Interferon is a central component of the vertebrate antiviral response. John Schoggins highlights recent findings that suggest a refined ‘limited set’ model of its activity, in which distinct viruses are targeted by small subsets of the induced gene repertoire.
Image credit: pbio.3003154
04/18/2025
Editorial
Vaccines have saved millions of lives, yet their importance and safety is repeatedly in question. This editorial argues that we cannot let disinformation campaigns get in the way of global public health.
Image credit: Unsplash user Ed Us
Neurotechnology offers unprecedented opportunities to treat neural disorders, restore brain function and enhance cognitive abilities. This collection explores the present and possible futures of neurotechnology to improve human health and cognition.
Translating conservation and biodiversity research from the field into the real world is a complex problem. This collection discusses issues around economics, policy, and how to do research that answers questions that decision makers have.
Symbiosis research has become a holistic and pervasive field with a mature theoretical basis. This collection showcases symbiotic relationships across the tree of life, exploring their evolutionary basis and underlying mechanisms.
PLOS Biology is 20 and we are celebrating with a collection that contains articles that look back at landmark studies that we published, others that look past and future, and others discussing how publishing and open science have evolved and what is to come.
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This collection explores engineering strategies to help us adapt plants to a changing climate, including breeding techniques, genome engineering, synthetic biology and microbiome engineering.
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